The dangers of non-empirical confirmation
History and Philosophy of Physics
2016-09-08 v1 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
Abstract
In the book "String Theory and the Scientific Method", Richard Dawid describes a few of the many non-empirical arguments that motivate theoretical physicists' confidence in a theory, taking string theory as case study. I argue that excessive reliance on non-empirical evidence compromises the reliability of science, and that precisely the case of string theory well illustrates this danger.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1609.01966,
title = {The dangers of non-empirical confirmation},
author = {Carlo Rovelli},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.01966},
year = {2016}
}
Comments
2 pages. Contribution to the meeting "Why Trust a Theory? Reconsidering Scientific Methodology in Light of Modern Physics," Munich, Dec. 7-9, 2015